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eye WEEKLY                                                May 23, 1996
Toronto's arts newspaper                      .....free every Thursday
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ON SCREEN                                                    ON SCREEN

        THE LESBIAN AND GAY FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL OF TORONTO

May 23-June 2. The Metropolitan Cinema (394 Euclid Ave.), with 
additional screenings at the Central YMCA (20 Gloucester St.) and 
AGO's Jackman Hall (317 Dundas St. W). $7, galas $10. Festival 
hotline: 925-XTRA.

                                  by
                             GEMMA FILES

It's that time again, when the Inside/Out Collective revs up its 
festival of lesbian and gay film and video. This year it promises good 
films, with hard questions and interesting answers. Just like always.

This is the sixth annual festival of fictional and non-fictional 
movies by and about gay people, the one that examines the increasing 
fluidity and superficiality of most current gender and sexual identity 
labels -- with a few films thrown in that have nothing to do with 
sexuality of any kind.

On the (mainly) latter tip and among the festival's highlights are 
four fresh new slices of whimsy from local videomaker Steve Reinke, 
still steadily inching his way toward his stated goal of 100 titles. 
The best of his pack is Falling (May 25, 7 p.m., Met), a wry monologue 
which shows how he wrote himself out of a "real job" as a Road To 
Avonlea screenwriter by doing an experimental take on the now-defunct 
TV show's unspoken rule -- that all the characters have to spend most 
of their time falling down, for no apparent reason.

On the other hand, there's Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams' 
documentary, Shinjuku Boys (Australia,1995) (May 25, 9 p.m., AGO), an 
amazing look at the three Japanese onnabe -- male impersonators -- who 
work as "ideal boyfriends" in a downtown club providing giggling 
heterosexual girls with non-threatening "masculine" attention. Gaish 
is a butch charmer who romances women right and left, but never spoils 
the illusion by taking off her clothes; Tatsu, who's on a program of 
male hormone injections, is already far enough down the female-to-male 
transsexual route to consider marriage and adoption with "his" steady 
girl; Kazuki lives in a Platonic common-law situation with a male-to-
female gay bar dancer.

All three have slipped through the cracks that Japanese society's 
rigid gender definitions leave open for any who dare to take advantage 
of them, maintaining themselves through a balancing act that makes for 
fascinating cinema.

A similar play of illusion versus self-delusion lodges at the heart of 
Midi Onodera's Skin Deep (June 1, 7 p.m., Met), a quick but effective 
stare down the gender vortex. Its main character, bisexual female 
director Alex Koyama (Natsuko Ohama), wants insight into the 
pleasure/pain principle of tattooing. She hires Chris, a young 
transgendered woman (played by biologically male actor Karem Malicki-
Sanchez) with a serious self-mutilation habit, as her 
assistant/consultant. Chris soon thinks she's found a soul mate, and 
Alex is in no hurry to disabuse her of the notion.

Against the warnings of her current lover, Montana (Melanie Nicholls-
King), Alex invites Chris to involve herself in every aspect of Alex's 
professional and personal life, even introducing her to her best 
friend, bar owner Penny Loafer (Dana Brooks), a real-life 
Victor/Victoria who's spent most of her career disguising her 
biologically female body as that of a male drag queen.

This is, of course, the kind of thing that can only end badly, but 
only after a lingering examination of the fantasies we spin for 
ourselves about who we are, and who we want to be. And though she got 
a little press at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, I'm 
happy to see Inside/Out helping more people to become exposed to 
Onodera's fresh and freaky filmmaking sensibility.

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